


hunger's vocabulary

by icicaille



Category: The Terror (TV 2018)
Genre: Explicit Sexual Content, Hate Sex, Humiliation, Insults, M/M, Plot What Plot/Porn Without Plot, Secret Relationship, Unresolved Emotional Tension
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-04-26
Updated: 2020-04-26
Packaged: 2021-03-02 02:47:27
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,754
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23857831
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/icicaille/pseuds/icicaille
Summary: “Ah, Sir John.” Francis cleared his throat once the wardroom was near to empty. “May I borrow James? Regarding the Lloyd’s balance. We took readings that require further inspection. I’ll send him back in a gig—tonight if the weather holds, in the morning otherwise.”
Relationships: Captain Francis Crozier/Commander James Fitzjames
Comments: 90
Kudos: 191
Collections: All Well: The Terror April 2020 Fest





	hunger's vocabulary

**Author's Note:**

> I set out to write the hatesex PWP I wanted to see in the world, but embarrassing displays of emotion ensued, and I'm kind of okay with that?
> 
> (Set in August 1846.)

“Ah, a very fine pease pudding, wasn’t it? You must relay my compliments to Mr. Diggle, Francis.”

“Hear hear,” said James, seated to Sir John’s left, lifting his Allsop’s. “To rival London’s finest.”

Francis smiled sourly and reached for his glass.

These dinners could not be borne without a tongue warmed through by whisky—a far greater quantity of whisky, indeed, than the meagre three fingers he’d permitted himself.

One indulgence in exchange for another tonight.

He tapped James’ shin with his boot under his table. When James glanced his way, Francis curved his brow into a high, indecent arch. The corners of James’ mouth crumpled as their eyes met.

“Well, gentlemen, we should be off before the temperature drops any lower,” Sir John said, clapping his hands. He rose; the rest followed suit. James lingered at the head of the table, fiddling with his napkin.

“Ah, Sir John.” Francis cleared his throat once the wardroom was near to empty. “May I borrow James? Regarding the Lloyd’s balance. We took readings that require further inspection. I’ll send him back in a gig—tonight if the weather holds, in the morning otherwise.”

Sir John inclined his head with paternal indulgence. “Of course. James, no doubt your mastery of the thing is coming along nicely under Francis’ tutelage.”

“To his credit,” Francis cut in, “James is a very keen student. Only requires a firm hand to guide him.”

James cast him an unimpressed look from across the room.

“Good night, Sir John,” Francis said, “and farewell. James, we’ll discuss at six bells.”

*

In the great cabin, lamplight rendered James in gauzy tones of bronze and gold. He turned to Francis, searching his face.

The scrutiny did not sit well. Francis longed to pluck a cutting barb from his arsenal, notch it, and pierce James’ glittering veneer. But gusting winds and a creaking hull were the only companions to their furtive solitude.

After a moment, James stripped off his gloves and cap and tossed them on the table. " _A firm hand to guide him_. Really, Francis. And kicking me under the table like that. Have you no shame?”

“Oh, don’t you play at priggishness, now.” Francis curled his lip. “That prude would expire on the spot if he knew where your knees’ve been.”

James sighed, shook his head in reproach like an old maid, and applied his fingers to his coat buttons. Francis stared at the ends of his hair, damp with snow. The high blush on his cheeks. The fine point of his nose, the razored planes of his face.

Each night James came to him, Francis grew further assured of the truth—he’d gotten himself so good and pickled that he’d fallen into one long, interminable stupor. No other logic could impel their assignations, not when James was who he was: a toff, a prattler, a useless braggart. The handsomest man in the Royal Navy.

“Leave off,” Francis said, laying a hand on James’ arm. He shoved James backward into the paneling, then pressed his face into the hollow of James’ shoulder and inhaled. Wood-smoke sweetness. He could’ve wept at the glory of it.

“ _Borrowed_ me for the whole night, you lech,” James murmured. “Well done.” His eyes shuttered in a mirror of the same ecstasy, Francis sensed, that rippled down his own spine.

“Bought you, more like.” Francis set his teeth against James’ throat. James’ pulse tripped, hasty and heady, under his mouth. “Sir John will be wanting something in return for the favor. A pretty piece like you commands a pretty price.”

“And what price would you pay for me, pray—” James’ breath caught. “Pray tell.”

“Ah, well, you see, a beauty in the Arctic wouldn’t shine half so brightly in a London molly house,” Francis said, folding himself along the length of James, tight as he could. “A regular threepenny upright, you are.”

James scoffed. “You’ve never set foot in a molly house.”

“Perhaps I’ve lain with boys far prettier than you. Who’d put you to shame.”

“Oh, Francis, they’d never let an old lushington inside, no matter how much coin you threw at their feet. No matter how sweetly you begged.” James’ fingers found their way to Francis’ trouser flies, and he expelled a long, plaintive breath in Francis’ ear. “You hardly knew how to touch me the first time. Your hands were shaking. Or have you forgotten?”

“Liar,” Francis spat. But his hands betrayed him once more, trembling with the ferocity of his desire. “Only because I wanted to wring your neck. You goddamned trollop.”

He jerked at the first brush of James’ fingers on his cock.

“Well, aren’t we fortunate tonight,” James said. “Seems to be in working order. Someone learned his lesson, eh?”

Francis had, in fact, learned to curb the whisky after several evenings spent fruitlessly frigging his soft cock while James spread himself open on the bed below. Nevertheless, he leaned in close to James’ ear. “I bring you here for your arse, not your foolish chatter. So get on with it.”

For a spell, there was only the quick susurrus of James’ cold, dry hand against his skin. Soon enough, Francis felt the familiar stirrings come on. He bit down on the collar of James’ coat and squeezed his eyes shut, conjuring an unpleasant assemblage: frostbite, malaria in Valparaiso, dinner at the Franklins’. He’d earned James’ contempt before with a premature emission. _No better than a ship’s boy_ , James had said, tossing his hair, as Francis tended to his stained shirt.

“Turn around,” he managed. “And get your trousers down.”

“Not in the cabin. Damned frigid.” James gave him one last stroke and disappeared into the berth. Gritting his teeth, Francis followed. He watched James disrobe with haste—piled in disarray atop Francis’ desk were his coat, waistcoat, cravat, shirt, and trousers. James retrieved the tin of grease from the bookshelf and sprawled on the bed as Francis undressed.

“If you would.” James held the tin out to him.

Francis thrilled at every chance to touch the soft places between James’ legs. “Give it here,” he said, with fervor poorly masquerading as irritation, and snatched the tin from James’ hand.

James got to his knees and bent over the bed, braced against the bulkhead. Francis dipped his index finger into the grease and applied it lightly, teasingly, to the furl of James’ arse, purely because he wished to see James tense the muscles of his back. He greased a second finger and observed, rapt, the fluid flexion of James’ shoulder blades as James took them.

“Alright, alright,” James said, after Francis had stretched him wide enough to fit a third. 

Francis fed his cock into the narrow heat that awaited him, suppressing a moan as he seated himself. The pace of his thrusts was unhurried, steady enough that James began to push back against him. Francis anchored himself with two hands at James’ waist and met him stroke for stroke. 

“Francis.” 

Francis wiped his brow with his forearm. “What is it?”

“Would you have chosen me?”

“I don’t—”

“If you had— _ah_ —been appointed rather than Sir John. Would I be your second.” James twisted round to study him, open, expectant. 

Francis shook his head and gathered all the contempt he could muster. “A ridiculous notion if I ever heard one. You’re out of your depth here, James. Your post was ill-gotten.” He dug his thumbs into James’ hips. “And you talk too much.” 

“Francis, _God_ , I—” 

“ _Quiet_ ,” Francis said, punctuated with a slap to James’ arse. He redoubled his efforts, if only to keep James from spouting more rubbish. James whimpered and dropped to his elbows, flaunting the graceful arc of his spine.

The obscene collision of their skin echoed in the berth. The first time they came together, Francis had blushed to hear it. Now, he clutched a handful of James’ hair and tugged sharply; James cried out. He marveled at how easily James yielded to him. Like this, James could be his. Belong to him entire.

Francis’ heart pounded. He pulled out his cock, leaving a slick trail in his wake, and fumbled for the bedrail.

“I’m afraid this really is a younger man’s sport, Francis,” James said, muffled in the sheets. “Shame you can’t keep up.”

Francis slapped his arse again—James bit out a cry—and admired the imprint it left. “Over,” he rasped.

Dutifully, James settled on his back and rearranged the long, lean lines of his body on the bed. Even in buggery he was dignified. Far afield, Francis knew, from his own scarlet, perspiring complexion. He reached for the little tin and slicked his cock again. “Sure you’d love to choke on this,” he murmured, making a show of stroking himself.

James nodded, wetting his lips.

“In the morning, if you’re good.” Francis took hold of James’ left leg, laid it over his shoulder, and pressed back in.

“ _Oh_ , that’s—” James’ hand stole to his cock with a sigh.

Francis knocked it away. “Beg me.”

James gaped up at him. “Damn you,” he said furiously. “How _dare_ —if you can’t—”

Francis snapped his hips harder, and James lost himself in a whine. The bed creaked under the force of their coupling. James tangled his hands in his hair and dug his heel into the meat of Francis’ shoulder.

“Beg,” Francis repeated.

“My God, I despise you,” James said, voice cracking. “Touch me.”

Francis let his knuckles trace the contours of James’ cock where it lay, dripping, on his hip; brushed the tip with his thumb. “You’d never be my second,” he grit out, “because the only thing you’re fit for is servicing me. I’d keep you locked in here in the berth for myself, for whenever I had need. You’d like that, wouldn’t you.”

James nodded eagerly. His cock twitched and produced a clear rill of liquid. “I’d let you— _God_. Anything you asked of me. My body.”

“You’d beg me a hundred, a thousand times a day. And I’d give it.” Francis’ nails sank into James’ thigh, carving out tiny crescents. Sweat cascaded in rivulets down his back. “Fuck,” he said. “Fuck, oh, fuck—”

“Christ have mercy,” James panted. “Do it, Francis. Inside.”

Francis shuddered with the violence of his release. Every nerve in his body was alight, inflamed. His vision clouded at the periphery. “James,” he breathed. “ _James_.” They were the only syllables he could summon. He threw out a hand to bear his weight as he sagged against the bulkhead, gasping for breath.

When he’d finally levered himself back upright, his mouth went dry at James frigging his cock, lip taught between his teeth. “I need,” James said. “Please.”

“I know what you need.” Francis grasped the base of his cock and slid out. “Filthy harlot.” He plunged three fingers into James’ arse, meeting the viscous heat of his own release. James moaned and reached for his cock. His thighs quivered.

“From my fingers, or not at all,” Francis said, batting James away again. He drove in harder, transfixed by James’ heaving breaths and the lurid conflation of skin and spend. James encouraged him with a feverish litany: _yes, yes, yes, yes, yes_. Then, suddenly, he seized Francis’ wrist in an iron grip and convulsed. Francis’ rhythm did not abate, even when James stifled a shout behind his hand and emptied onto his belly.

They stared at each other as James’ arse tightened and pulsed around Francis like a furnace. Francis granted himself a moment more to savor it—his fingers cradled stickily within James. Here was undeniable proof of James’ pleasure. He had given it to James well. He could give James anything he desired.

“Enough,” James said, taking in great gulps of air. “Good Christ.”

Francis withdrew and eyed the spend pooling around James’ navel. He itched to lick it clean, to sweep through the softness there with his tongue.

James wouldn’t protest if he was gentle enough. He would sink his hands in Francis’ hair, stroke it away from his forehead, as Francis kissed a languid path down his belly. Breathless, he would draw Francis to his chest, press their lips together to conceal his half-smile. _You are very good to me_ , he would say. Francis would kiss James’ most secret, tender spots: his eyelids, the insides of his wrists, under his chin. Their bodies would move leisurely, as if underwater.

James murmured his name.

God, he was lovely. The loveliest thing Francis had ever seen. Forgetting himself, he told James so.

James swallowed and looked away.

Francis’ face burned. “Well,” he said. He stood, rinsed his hands in the basin, and shucked on his trousers. Humiliation clung to him like a too-tight vest—one that he should have, by rights, outgrown decades ago.

The sheets rustled behind him.

“Won’t you sit with me for a moment, Francis? The storm hasn’t let up.”

Francis turned round. James was chewing his lip. He’d tucked himself up at the foot of the bed, wrapped tightly in layers of sheets and quilts. Cocooned in a warmth Francis ached to feel as sweat cooled beneath his shirtsleeves.

It was not the thing to do, however, for any poet worth his salt could pen the finale to their sordid little affair. Later, once they’d discovered the Passage and returned home, James would perhaps recall it. Lazing in bed with some lithe young man, louche with satiation, he’d say, _Do you know, I seduced Captain Crozier while we were up north_.

_What! That old bore!_

_A rather sad showing. Poor man could hardly get it up, then made all manner of mortifying remarks. Positively reeked of desperation._

No doubt it was the only memory of him James would care to keep.

“I’m due at an officer’s meeting. Clean yourself up before you soil my sheets, for God’s sake,” Francis snapped.

James gave a low, scornful laugh, as if he had anticipated no other reply. “You are the most miserable man I’ve ever had the misfortune to encounter, Francis,” he said. “Is contentment wholly alien to you?”

“We did not sign up for _contentment_ in the Arctic, James. Perhaps you confuse _Terror_ and _Erebus_ for one of your clubs.”

“We are men, composed of flesh and blood, not damned statues. Why on earth do you think I consent to this?”

“So you can have a giggle with Henry, I expect, while you concoct another of your idiotic tales,” Francis said. He found that the thought did not wound him as deeply as it ought to. A man who took up with James Fitzjames could never rely on decorum. “Or you simply required a cock to sit on.”

James buried his face in his hands. “Rest assured I could find other cocks attached to more pleasant owners.”

“Oh, could you now.” Francis fastened the last button on his waistcoat and started on his cravat.

“I have never wanted for companionship, Francis, unlike yourself,” James said. “Even with the size of your cock, you flounder. Most comely thing about your figure.” He drew the sheets around his shoulders. “You know, I did feel for you once. I thought, surely this man has been wronged, robbed of his joy by some unknown malefactor. I was mistaken, of course. You’re like a snarling stray who bites the hand of a man offering it scraps of mutton.”

“And you, the great hero of Chingkiang—as you never fail to remind us—so hard-up you’d take a buggering from my pitiful person. Little sense in that, hm?”

“Indeed,” James said, with a smile that ended where it began. “This strange place drives us all to madness sooner or later, I suppose.”

James and he were of the same mind there, Francis knew. His judgment was sorely compromised by this arrangement, which never failed to leave him wrong-footed, even as he luxuriated in the respite it offered from his melancholy. A terrible, expansive unease settled over him. “Call for Jopson when you’re presentable,” he said. Then he donned his cap and coat and fled.

James would redress himself in fine linen, leather, and wool; consult Francis’ looking glass to arrange his hair just so. He would spend the evening in the spare berth Jopson made up. Come morning, he and Francis would bid their adieus, Francis would wish him well, and they would not meet again for a fortnight.

James would be finished with him within the year. But Francis—like the sullen, grasping creature he was—would hoard the memory of James’ body forever.

**Author's Note:**

> Title excerpted from "Aubade Beginning in Handcuffs" by torrin a. greathouse.
> 
> Many thanks to [reserve](https://archiveofourown.org/users/reserve/pseuds/reserve) for the notes and assurances – and to everyone on twitter for cheerleading me when I insisted on dragging my feet.
> 
> You can find me on twitter at [icicaille_](https://twitter.com/icicaille_). Please come say hi if you enjoyed this!


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